“This is not a work of fiction. This is the raw reality of life, and a larger part of society. Nothing more, nothing less. Some statistics reveal that approximately 8000 children are abused in some way everyday, of which 5 will die globally. This equates to almost 3 million abuse cases a year and almost 2000 deaths a year. Whether or not the figures are lower or higher I’m obviously not sure but apparently child abuse has increased 134% since 1980 and is now classed as a worldwide epidemic. Having said that, I honestly believe that my testimony can be of some help to someone out there. This book is based on the foundation of how being sexually, mentally and physically abused has affected my life and how the desire for escaping the anguish and the reality of the situation, through drinking alcohol, has nearly killed me...numerous times to say the least. This will take you on a journey through my childhood years, my teenage nightmare, to the beginning of my adult life.” This is not just the unburdening of Nicky’s story. It is the start of something new; a sign of hope; a show of strength. Nicky refuses to take the hand that she has been dealt and become another statistic. She has hope for herself and her future and a strong focus on the new organisation she is developing.

This 'landmark' text by one of the most respected researchers in drug use considers the issues surrounding the gendering of drug use, and within this looks critically at two approaches - the classical and postmodern. Ettorre has previously argued for the need for a gender-sensitive approach to the drugs field and here she contends that this approach is still lacking. This book draws together theoretical and empirical studies on drug use, provides a comprehensive analysis of gendered bodies and drug use and examines the idea of a drug-using society and the implications this holds for social inequality and exclusion.

A unique answer to the perennial question--why do college students drink so much? Most American college campuses are home to a vibrant drinking scene where students frequently get wasted, train-wrecked, obliterated, hammered, destroyed, and decimated. The terms that university students most commonly use to describe severe alcohol intoxication share a common theme: destruction, and even after repeated embarrassing, physically unpleasant, and even violent drinking episodes, students continue to go out drinking together. In Getting Wasted, Thomas Vander Ven provides a unique answer to the perennial question of why college students drink. Vander Ven argues that college students rely on "drunk support:" contrary to most accounts of alcohol abuse as being a solitary problem of one person drinking to excess, the college drinking scene is very much a social one where students support one another through nights of drinking games, rituals and rites of passage. Drawing on over 400 student accounts, 25 intensive interviews, and one hundred hours of field research, Vander Ven sheds light on the extremely social nature of college drinking. Giving voice to college drinkers as they speak in graphic and revealing terms about the complexity of the drinking scene, Vander Ven argues that college students continue to drink heavily, even after experiencing repeated bad experiences, because of the social support that they give to one another and due to the creative ways in which they reframe and recast violent, embarrassing, and regretful drunken behaviors. Provocatively, Getting Wasted shows that college itself, closed and seemingly secure, encourages these drinking patterns and is one more example of the dark side of campus life.

Drug and alcohol education in public schools may be important, but its authoritarian stance often invites skepticism among teachers and students alike. Yet this program has its roots not in modern bureaucracy or even Prohibition but in a social movement that flourished over a century ago.

Scientific Temperance Instruction was the most successful grassroots education program in American history, championed by an army of housewives in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union under the leadership of Mary Hanchett Hunt. As Hunt and her forces took their message across the country, they were opposed by many educators and other professionals who believed that ordinary citizens had no business interfering with educational matters. STI sparked heated conflict between expert and popular authority in the debate over alcohol education, but it was eventually mandated as part of public school curricula in all states.

The real issue surrounding STI, argues Jonathan Zimmerman, was not alcohol but the struggle to reconcile democracy and expertise. In this first book-length study of the crusade for STI, he shows Mary Hunt to be a wily and manipulative politician as he examines how citizens and experts used knowledge selectively to advance their own agendas. His work offers a microcosm for observing Progressive Era tensions between democracy and professionalism, localism and centralization, and social conservatism and liberalism.

"Distilling Democracy" points up a crucial and ongoing dilemma in our education system: educational directives handed down by experts deny citizens the right to transmit their values to their children, while populist educational values sometimes stifle classroom debate. By using history to demonstrate the public's participation in shaping public education, Zimmerman suggests that however unappealing the program, society needs to embrace such popular movements in order to uphold true democracy. His book offers fresh insight into an overlooked chapter in our history and will spark debate by raising fresh questions about lay influence on school curricula in modern America.

This volume introduces students to the emerging field of state mental health policy, its history, current policies, organizational models and required programming knowledge. Focusing on current issues and trends, it also provides administrative and policy practitioners with a previously unavailable source of new program designs and initiatives. Five chapters on program development identify key principles of programming and describe model programs in primary prevention, clinical treatment, and psychiatric rehabilitation. Contributors include leading scholars and practitioners, several having served as state commissioners of mental health. This is the first book written specifically on state mental health policy. Its collection of essays together with the editors' introduction and conclusion will provide direction for future inquiry and policy development.

State mental health has become a rich source of policy, program, and practice experimentation. Heretofore these efforts have been insufficiently evaluated. The result is duplication of efforts and repetition of errors. This volume introduces its readers to state mental health policy as an emerging specialty. The introduction identifies pivotal issues explored in this collection and then presents an analytical framework and methodology. The initial section examines the historical backdrop and provides a detailed analysis of legal issues. The second section covers current policies and trends. The third, Mental Health Program Models, looks into the packaging of various direct and indirect practice modalities. It then delves into major program options for achieving the ends of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Examples of state-of-the-art public programs are also presented. The final section considers the problems of financially and administratively supporting these policies and programs. A summary chapter reviews conclusions and presents a range of recommendations directed primarily toward administrative integration and fiscal responsiveness.

In thirteen chapters, twenty-four authors share their analyses, concerns, and conclusions in several domains including the: meaning and dynamics of multiculturalism affecting prevention intervention, relative risks and knowledge gaps across ethnic groups, social trends affecting health risks and substance abuse, lessons learned from substance abuse research and prevention, role of the media, promises and limits of the new public health paradigm for assessment, policy development, assurance of preventive services, and social action and empowerment for prevention in partnership with the public.

Drinking alcohol can be immensely pleasurable and life enhancing. On the other hand, it can be associated with dangers and risks. This book explores some of the implications of this dichotomy--which creates many policy and practice dilemmas--by a detailed exploration of the place of drinking in women's lives. Interviews and case-studies show women's drinking practice to be constructive and autonomous responses to the social and material contexts of their lives.

Researchers in economics, psychology, and pharmacology review recent empirical and theoretical work on behavioral-economic approaches to understanding and altering the use and abuse of alcohol, cigarettes, and other substances. Among the topics they discuss are reducing drug abuse by enriching the e

This study is based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork with Colombian drug traffickers (traquetos) in The Netherlands and Colombia. The author has uncovered the social world of traquetos: how and why they get involved in illicit activities, the nature of their work, and how they organize their businesses. This book will be valued by criminologists, social scientists, drug researchers, policymakers, organized crime scholars, and by those interested in Colombia, Latino immigrants issues, and the cocaine business.

In the last 15 years, the prison population in the U.S. increased by more than 188 percent. The increase has been fueled largely by increases in the number of individuals convicted of drug-related offenses. These offenders constitute a disproportionate number of recidivists who, in turn, are responsible for a relatively large proportion of criminal activity in our society. The vast majority of these offenders were arrested for committing violent crimes, and most of the offenders are poor, unemployed, uneducated, come from dysfunctional families, and are African-American. Contrary to public opinion, many of these offenders are tired of their "revolving door" relationship with the police, courts, and correctional institutions. However, without appropriate social and therapeutic support, there is little hope of altering their behavior. This volume seeks to address specific issues relevant to prisons in America and includes contributions by practitioners in the field of prison-based drug treatment and therapy programs. The work is an important contribution to the literature examining the extent to which rehabilitation (i.e., prison-based drug treatment programs) has effectively reduced recidivism, drug relapse, and violent crime in our society.

The domestic phase of Washington's war on drugs has received considerable criticism over the years from a variety of individuals. Until recently, however, most critics have not stressed the damage that the international phase of the drug war has done to our Latin American neighbors. That lack of attention has begun to change and Ted Carpenter chronicles our disenchantment with the hemispheric drug war. Some prominent Latin American political leaders have finally dared to criticize Washington while at the same time, the U.S. government seems determined to perpetuate, if not intensify, the antidrug crusade. Spending on federal antidrug measures also continues to increase, and the tactics employed by drug war bureaucracy, both here and abroad, bring the inflammatory "drug war" metaphor closer to reality. Ending the prohibitionist system would produce numerous benefits for both Latin American societies and the United States. In a book deriving from his work at the CATO Institute, Ted Carpenter paints a picture of this ongoing fiasco.

The name "AIDS" is an accusation. It implies punishment for sin--homosexuality and promiscuity. AIDS is a moral judgement masquerading as a scientific name, which is at the very heart of discrimination against the infected. At the bottom are drug users, victims of the War On Drugs, condemned to contract AIDS by using contaminated syringes necessitated by scarcity resulting from restrictive policies. A rational way to control HIV is to liberalize drug paraphernalia policies as in Europe. The U.S. has not taken this simple step, thus unleashing the AIDS epidemic among drug users, their sexual partners, and neonates. While this policy neglect can be understood in the context of AIDS prevention dominated by moral, political, and religious ideologies rather than epidemiological facts, there are critical racial implications. The ethnic divide separating the white researchers and the infected who belong to minorities has fuelled comparisons of AIDS with the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study and some preventive strategies have been called genocidal plots. Recent research indicating the ineffectiveness of bleach to disinfect paraphernalia has exposed the deadly consequences of a nonchalant attitude to research and compromises for political expediency.

At the beginning of the 21st century, alcoholism, transnational drug trafficking and drug addiction constitute major problems in various South Asian countries. The production, circulation and consumption of intoxicating substances created (and responded to) social upheavals in the region and had widespread economic, political and cultural repercussions on an international level. This book looks at the cultural, social, and economic history of intoxicants in South Asia, and analyses the role that alcohol and drugs have played in the region. The book explores the linkages between changing meanings of intoxicating substances, the making of and contestations over colonial and national regimes of regulation, economics, and practices and experiences of consumption. It shows the development of current meanings of intoxicants in South Asia - in terms of politics, cultural norms and identity formation - and the way in which the history of drugs and alcohol is enmeshed in the history of modern empires and nation states - even in a country in which a staunch teetotaller and active anti-drug crusader like Mohandas Gandhi is presented as the 'father of the nation'. Primarily a historical analysis, the book also includes perspectives from Modern Indology and Cultural Anthropology and situates developments in South Asia in wider imperial and global contexts. It is of interest to scholars working on the social and cultural history of alcohol and drugs, South Asian Studies and Global History.

Sport and alcohol have become inextricably linked. Alcohol companies provide funding, fans consume alcohol when watching, and players celebrate, bond and relax with alcohol. This critical analysis of the relationship between consumption of alcohol and participation in sport argues that sport has played, and continues to play an important role in the normalisation and legitimisation of excessive drinking. Using philosophical arguments rooted in ethics and virtue theory, the book examines the alcohol-tolerant ethos that pervades contemporary sport, and the initiation of members of the sporting practice community into problematic drinking. It argues that sport should be aware of the potential for alcoholism and provide the right type of support for athletes, that sports people can, and should, be seen as role models, and that it's preferable that athletes set good examples rather than bad. Drawing on case studies of individual problem drinkers in sport, it calls for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between bad behaviour and underlying causes, and for a re-evaluation of how such individuals are treated. Sport and Alcohol examines an important issue in contemporary sport and society, and is illuminating reading for anybody with an interest in the social, cultural or philosophical study of sport.

In an important new contribution to the sociological literature, M.F. Stuck explores both the place of sport in adolescent society and, more specifically, the ways that drug use or non-use fits into the lives of and is talked about by youths who participate in sports and those who do not. The study breaks new ground both in its subject matter and in its methodology--virtually no studies exist which deal with the question of drug usage among adolescent athletes and most previous studies of adolescent drug use rely on survey data rather than on the adolescents' own descriptions of their drug use or non-use. In addition to examining specific questions related to adolescent drug use and sports, the author utilizes several theoretical perspectives drawn from sociology to illuminate the study findings: Sutherland's theory of differential association; Cohen's notion of the concept of subcultures; and the social control theories of Hirschi and Sykes and Matza. Throughout, Stuck focuses particularly upon how the actors--the adolescents themselves--explain drug use or non-use and involvement or non-involvement in sports.

The study begins by introducing appropriate literature in sociology and the sociology of sport and goes on to describe the research methodology. The bulk of the volume is devoted to an extended analysis of the findings. Among the specific questions examined are: What is the meaning of sport in the lives of the adolescents in the study? Is the popular conception that sports and clean living go hand in hand upheld? What are the explanations offered by adolescents regarding their drug use? Is sport a form of individually chosen social control? What part does the peer group play in an adolescent's social world? Is involvement in sport a mechanism for the prevention or limitation of drug use among adolescents? Stuck concludes by offering broad policy recommendations based on the study's findings. Students and professionals in the fields of sociology-sport, deviance, qualitative methodology-adolescent psychology, and education will find this volume enlightening reading.

Focusing on a highly controversial and fiercely debated subject, this survey tracks the social and economic consequences of the production, trafficking, and consumption of cocaine, heroin, and cannabis. From a growing body of literature, LaMond Tullis has extracted the most salient economic, social, and political themes currently under discussion in both scholarly publications and in the responsible press. The two-part volume consisting of a lengthy review of relevant literature and an annotated bibliography helps its users understand the major issues: Can and should consumption be curtailed, supplies suppressed, and traffickers eliminated? Can the unintended economic, social, and political consequences of curtailing, suppressing, and eliminating somehow be mitigated? Should these drugs be legalized? Would legalization produce its own array of unintended and largely unacceptable consequences? Although tentative answers to these questions abound, this excellent resource is testimony to the fact that there is still little agreement on how to deal with these powerful substances and the problems they generate. Tullis's compilation presents the best overview of this complex subject to date.

The first half of this two-part reference consists of a survey of the published literature on the production and consumption of the three illicit drugs. Chapters are devoted to the global patterns of production and consumption of cocaine, heroin, and cannabis, to the consequences, both positive and negative, of drug consumption and production, and to the policy measures that have been adopted (or are under consideration) in both consuming and producing countries. These chapters will be of interest to those wishing to obtain an overall view of the subject and to specialists seeking a guide to the literature outside their particular area of knowledge. The second half of the book contains an annotated bibliography of about 2,000 items covering works published in English--plus a few in Spanish--as books, articles, or press reports. This section will be invaluable to researchers working on the frontiers of the subject and to general readers who wish to pursue particular topics in greater depth. The volume should be at the fingertips of policy makers, legislators, law enforcement officials, judges, and social workers, as well as students and teachers.

With skill and compassion, Sarah Hafner, a recovering alcoholic, elicits from 18 women their struggles and triumphs as they fight addiction in a society where women are already given second-class status. By interviewing a cross-section of women, Hafner makes readily available the identification process found so helpful in various recovery programs. These stories reveal the personal side of a disease that afflicts approximately 10.5 million Americans nearly half of them women, and directly affects many millions more. Nice Girls Don't Drink invites us into the lives of women from all segments of our society - rich and poor, gay and straight, women in diverse ethnic groups and a variety of occupations. Housewives, salesclerks, counselors, and artists are here together telling of a disease that transcends the distinctions of class, education, and culture. With courage, candor, and even flashes of humor, the women recount the early influences that led to their addiction, often including alcoholic or abusive parents; how alcoholism took over their lives; crucial turning points; and the recovery that enabled them to reclaim their dignity. The book guides readers to sources of help, and lists the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the thirteen affirmations of Women for Sobriety. A monument to the resilience of the human spirit, Nice Girls Don't Drink is a source of inspiration not only for the female alcoholic, but for anyone struggling to overcome an addiction or other handicap and live a more complete life.

This book provides a current perspective on alcohol and aging to better understand the trends, costs, benefits, and clinical and community evidenced-based strategies. This book embraces not only the physical, cognitive, psychological, and social health benefits of moderate drinking in the elderly, it also delves into the risks of excessive drinking, including physical and psychiatric morbidity, neurodegeneration, medication complications, and accidents and injuries, and loss of independence. Written by experts in the field, this book is the only current text that includes the most current scientific, research, empirical, and practice information alongside a comprehensive review of the status of the field that will help guide alcohol use management and stimulate future research. Alcohol and Aging is the ultimate resource for all researchers, educators, clinicians, and professionals working with older adults who drink.

The war on drugs is a war on ordinary people. Using that premise, historian Richard Lawrence Miller analyzes America's drug war with passion seldom encountered in scholarly writing. Miller presents numerous examples of drug law enforcement gone amok, as police and courts threaten the happiness, property, and even lives of victims-some of whom are never charged with a drug crime, let alone convicted of one. Miller not only argues that criminal justice zealots are harming the democracy they are sworn to protect, but that authoritarians unfriendly to democracy are stoking public fear in order to convince citizens to relinquish traditional legal rights. Those are the very rights that thwart implementation of an agenda of social control through government power. Miller contends that an imaginary drug crisis has been manufactured by authoritarians in order to mask their war on democracy. He not only examines numerous civil rights sacrificed in the name of drugs, but demonstrates how their loss harms ordinary Americans in their everyday lives. Showing how the war on drug users fits into a destruction process that can lead to mass murder, Miller calls for an end to the war before it proceeds deeper into the destruction process. This is a book for anyone who wonders about the value of civil liberties, and for anyone who wonders why people seek to destroy their neighbors. Using voluminous examples of drug law enforcement victimizing blameless people, this book demonstrates how the loss of civil liberties in the name of drugs threatens law-abiding Americans at work and at home.

While evidence-based policy is an emerging rhetoric of the desire by and for governments to develop policies based on the best available evidence, drug policy is an area where particular challenges abound. This book is a detailed and comprehensive examination of the contours of drug policy development through the consideration of the particular roles of science, media, and interest groups. Using Belgium as the primary case-study, supplemented by insights gathered from other countries, the author contributes to a richer understanding of the science-policy nexus in the messy, real-world complexities of drug policy. Change or Continuity in Drug Policy: The Roles of Science, Media, and Interest Groups is the first book to bring together policy and media theories, knowledge utilisation models, and public scholarship literature. As such, the book provides unique insights relevant to aspects of change or continuity in drug policies in Europe and beyond. This book will be of great value to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to academics, practitioners and policymakers with interest in the science-policy nexus with a particular focus on the drug policy domain.

Alcohol and its consumption is a major topic for public policy-making. Growing awareness of alcohol-related health problems among the general public has led to high levels of interest in alcohol consumption and its impact on society. This innovative collection of new perspectives on this critically important issue is informed by a leading group of international social scientists. Topics covered include alcoholism, the family, minimum pricing, paternalistic controls, and Socially Responsible Investment programs. Together, these essays reveal illuminating new insights into how public policy might be improved. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science.

The current generation of adolescents are experiencing more stressful and/or negative experiences at an earlier age in their development than previous generations. The consequence is that more and more teenagers are becoming casualties of drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, and mental illness. In this book, George R. Holmes provides care-givers and parents with specific tactics to move teenagers successfully through adolescence.

The prevention of adolescent casualties is accomplished by the practice of three major prevention strategies. The first provides a clear understanding of the complex changes adolescents experience with what Holmes calls a map of the territory called adolescence. The second involves a set of interpersonal prescriptions or ways to communicate with teens that have proven usefulness. The third encourages a renaissance in schools serving teenagers by bringing technology and talent to the classroom in a new way. These strategies are designed to promote greater levels of social competency among teenagers. This, in turn, leads to fewer major emotional problems and a more successful move to adulthood. Holmes's volume is an important tool for counselors, mental health professionals, social workers, and others dealing with today's adolescents.

For many years, what has been known about recovery from addictive behaviors has come solely from treatment studies. Only recently has the study of recoveries in the absence of formal treatment or self-help groups provided an alternative source of information. This book on the process of self-change from addictive behaviors is the first of its kind, as it presents more than research findings. Rather, it presents the process of self-change from several different perspectives - environmental, cross-cultural, prevention and interventions at both societal and individual level. It provides strategies for how health care practitioners and government policy makers alike can aid and foster self-change. Directions for future research priorities are also presented.

This is the tenth volume in the Research Advances series and the seventh published by Plenum Press. Volume 10 is another omnibus volume, providing specialized and advanced reviews in a number of areas related to the use of alcohol, illicit drugs, and tobacco. We include also a brief history of the Center for Alcohol Studies that gives Mark Keller's unique perspective on this noted institution. Two of the chapters are decidedly longer than the others-very long chapters have appeared occasionally in the past, and we think that it is one of the strengths of the series that we are able to accommodate such reviews. Again the editorial board has changed. After several years of service, Reginald G. Smart has stepped down. New to the board are Helen M. Annis, Michael S. Goodstadt, Lynn T. Kozlowski, and Evelyn R. Vingilis. This is likely to be the sole volume for which Goodstadt is on the board, since before completion of this volume he moved from the Addiction Research Foundation to the Center for Alcohol Studies, Rutgers University.